Nancy Ruel’s kind, grandmotherly voice greets local Democrats who call the party’s Bond Street headquarters in downtown Bend on one of the three days a week she sits behind its reception desk organizing paperwork and answering the phone.

“Deschutes County Democrats, this is Mrs. Ruel speaking,” said the 70-year-old when she picked up the phone Wednesday, while giving her husband, Conrad Ruel, a stack of voter registration forms so he could enter their information into a computer database. Both of them have been putting a considerable amount of time — he works one day a week, she works three — into helping President Barack Obama get re-elected this year and seeing that other Democratic candidates succeed.

Party leaders say senior volunteers like the Ruels or Dennis and Janet Dorgan — a pair of 67-year-old Deschutes County Republican Party volunteers — play an invaluable role during an election season because of their availability, their willingness to work and their ability to reach an important segment of the population.

“It’s critical,” said Trent Lutz, executive director of the Democratic Party of Oregon.

Availability

Dennis and Janet Dorgan spent early Friday afternoon hosting a reception at the Republican Party’s headquarters for a group of people who had just seen the documentary “2016: Obama’s America” at a local movie theater.

Typically, the Dorgans work at the party’s Third Street headquarters in Bend four or five days a week.

“We’ve been busy since 2008,” Dennis Dorgan said.

Dennis and Janet Dorgan started making calls to voters on behalf of the Republican Party during the last presidential election, shortly after moving to Bend from the Portland area where he worked as a sales manager for a chemical company.

They met state Rep. Jason Conger, R-Bend, through this experience and spent a considerable amount of time working on his campaign during the 2010 election. The couple helped Conger by knocking on doors, making phone calls and attending community events. Their attention has now shifted to making sure former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney can beat Obama this election season.

“We just kept getting more and more assignments,” Dennis Dorgan said. He and his wife do whatever tasks come their way, he said, because they strongly support the party’s principles of limited government, individual responsibility and accountability, and because it is a lot of fun.

The Dorgans were asked if they’d co-chair the Deschutes Republican Party’s precinct committee person program last November.

Dennis Dorgan said this meant they’d be in charge of the party’s “boots on the ground” volunteers, holding meetings across the county to discuss the party’s platform and candidates, and helping candidates raise money by making phone calls and hosting an event at their house.

“We decided that if we were ever going to do anything serious, this was the year to do it,” he said. “We just wish the price of gas would go down.”

Lutz, with the Democratic Party of Oregon, said retired volunteers can play a huge role in helping a campaign get off the ground because they’ve got the time and the desire to spend three or four days working in an office or out in the field doing various tasks.

“We get volunteers when and where they’re available,” he said, adding that the more time a person can spend volunteering at a campaign office, the less time the office’s staff has to spend recruiting and training new volunteers.

But he said what’s even more important than the amount of work seniors can put in, is the people they can reach.

Outreach

One of Nancy Ruel’s biggest political concerns is what she sees as the growing difference between the people she calls the “haves” (the wealthy) and the “have-nots” (the disadvantaged).

“I worry about that a lot because I’ve always worked with the have-nots,” she said, adding that she likes to work with the Democratic Party because in her mind it is represents the interests of the have-nots more than the Republican party does.

Nancy Ruel also wants to make sure people have a voice, which is why both she and Conrad Ruel take a special delight in registering voters, especially younger ones. That’s because Nancy Ruel couldn’t vote until after her 21st birthday because the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, wasn’t adopted until July 1971. Ruel, a former civics teacher and high school principal, often asks people who the first president they voted for was.

“If you didn’t vote, you don’t get say anything about who’s in office,” said Ruel. “You need to keep quiet and not blame anybody when you see something you don’t like.”

Seniors are more likely to vote than any other segment of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which found 77.1 percent of registered Oregon voters between the ages of 65 and 74 and 71.5 percent of registered voters who were older than 75 cast their ballots during the 2008 presidential election. The state’s overall voter turnout that year was 62.6 percent.

Lutz said these high turnout rates are another reason a political parties enjoy having active seniors involved in their campaigns.

“We believe the best contact is peer-to-peer,” he said, adding that people are more willing to listen to a someone’s message when it comes from one of their friends rather than from someone they do not know or do not identify with. “(Seniors) can reach out to their peers and get them to be active.”

Having senior volunteers on staff to help carry a party’s message is going to be especially important this year because two senior-related programs, Medicare and Social Security, seem to be dominating most of the discussion in the current presidential race.

“That’s absolutely going to be an issue in this year’s election,” Lutz said.